Domaine Courbis

The Courbis family has grown vines in Châteaubourg since the sixteenth century. When Laurent and Dominique took over in the 1980s, the house already had four centuries of farming behind it; their father, Maurice, had been one of those who opened the way in the area.

The domaine covers some forty hectares of hillside across the communes of Glun, Châteaubourg and Cornas: eight in the Cornas appellation, eighteen and a half in red Saint-Joseph and five in white Saint-Joseph, plus Saint-Péray. The soils change with the parcel —granite sandstone where the Syrah goes, limestone at Les Royes— which is what justifies bottling the sites separately.

In Cornas they farm two places that are nothing alike. Les Eygats faces east and south-east at two hundred and fifty metres, planted in 1991. La Sabarotte is a south-east-facing slope with genuinely old vines: they were planted in 1947. Champelrose completes the run of single-site bottlings.